Civilising the settler: unstable representations of French settler colonialism in Algeria

Abstract

ABSTRACTThrough an analysis of the work of Algérianiste author Paul Achard (1887–1962), this article will examine the writing of what Anna Johnston and Alan Lawson term the ‘indigenising narrative’ in the French Algerian context. Achard’s L’Homme de mer (1931) and Salaouetches (1939) present the birth of a new ‘Algerian’ settler community from the shared experience of European migrants, who are presented as heirs to Algeria’s Roman past. Such assertions of ‘Algerian’ identity were characteristic to the colony’s Algérianiste literary movement during the inter-war period, which sought to present the settler community as culturally distinct from metropolitan France. However, both texts were written in the years directly following the 1930 centennial celebrations of the French invasion of Algiers and foreground the influence of French ‘civilisation’ on this Latinate identity. Thus this article will propose that Achard’s work is indicative of the complexity of the ‘settler colonial situation’ in the French Algerian context. Both texts attempt to present an ‘indigenised’ settler community – a Latin race constructed from a shared experience of Mediterranean migration – but also problematize the status of large portions of the colonial working classes within this ‘race’ – those settlers of non-French origins. On the one hand, these settlers are a source of the ‘picturesque’, purveyors of local colour in customs, mannerisms, and language, evidencing a distinct settler identity. On the other hand, they constitute a threat to French hegemony in the colony.